Facebook messenger can now recognise faces, but will the EU allow it?

Mark Zuckerberg talks about the Messenger app during the Facebook F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco. Photograph: Eric Risberg/AP Facebook’s Messenger app has received a new dose of artificial intelligence, and will now start recognising the faces of users’ friends in photographs uploaded to the service. But the new feature, which is initially rolling out in Australia, may not be coming to Europe any time soon, given the social network’s long-running squabble with European data protection regulators over whether or not facial recognition infringes on the right to privacy. For users who have the feature, dubbed “photo magic”, enabled, Messenger will now peek into their camera rolls and analyse recent photos to see if there are any faces it recognises. If there are, it will prompt them to share it…